January 10, 2025 – 66 days to Cape Epic I'm writing this from home in the Netherlands, not from Girona where I should be finishing day 5 of our training camp. Sometimes the universe has different plans for you..... The Plan vs. Reality Sunday, January 5th: After a ten-hour
First of all, sorry for my minimal contribution to the blog the last weeks. While increasing my training hours, I was also moving to a new house and trying to run a company with end-of-year deadlines. Basically, just a lot of excuses. I admire how Ingmar still finds the time
March 2025. A random day, when I texted Jeroen: ‘’Hey, that Cape Epic thing you told me about a long time ago, shouldn’t we just sign up and go for it?” It was something completely out of the blue, as Jeroen and I had not discussed it anytime recently.
Tuesday morning, 10:30 AM. Back on the Kickr for the first time serious session in a week, after doing some light work for an hour on Saturday (which was the sweatiest session so far, shortly after catching that virus) 2.5 hours scheduled: 1 hour endurance at 190w, 24
Tuesday morning: Sore throat. Itchy ear. Slight runny nose. I'd just finished a massive week of training. Six sessions, 390km. For the coming week I had two four-hour rides scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Everything still fully on track for Cape Epic. And then somehow nature always finds
Sometimes the universe has other plans for you. 120 days long, I'd been sticking really strictly to my training schedule. Hitting those Tuesday and Wednesday morning Kickr sessions, slowly building fitness, one day at a time. The rhythm was there, the motivation was high, and the thrill for
When I started this Cape Epic journey with Jeroen, I expected to lean heavily on the JOIN app, my Wahoo Kickr, and maybe some nutritional guidance, like the EatmyRide app. What I didn't expect was that AI would become one of my most-used tools in this preparation. Not
Halfway through anything difficult is when reality hits you hard. You're too far in to quit, but far enough to know exactly how hard the rest is going to be. That's exactly where Jeroen and I are right now - 111 days into structured training for
I'm writing this from Austria. I am on holiday with my wife and our girls. Mountains, autumn colors, beautiful weather, what's not to like about it. Indeed, it's all great! Except that this is the first week that I found that keeping up the
After weeks of building the hype online and announcing the 9th of October as the launch date for the route, last Thursday at 21:00, finally the live stream was there. And I must honestly say, both Jeroen and I were excited about it. So 20:58 sharp we tuned
Yesterday we did something completely different. A very welcome change in our daily workout. Not only because we are rarely ever riding on MTB trails anymore, but also because we lack an important part of what is needed for the Cape Epic: Riding Skills. Although riding a mountain bike for
There was a time, not even too long ago, I had a social life. You know, the life where you occasionally meet other people and talk about things not MTB related. Yes, there are people out there doing that. And then there was the life where you had friends with